News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Scraping 241 UK council planning portals – 2.6M decisions... by vr46 on Tuesday April 28, 2026 @04:11AM (#47931716)
Amazing! It’s so bloody hard to access this information or even to know what there is.

Careful not to expose the councils too publicly before they shut you off

Re:Scraping 241 UK council planning portals – 2.6M decisions... by mebkorea on Tuesday April 28, 2026 @04:22AM (#47931783)
Cheers! Yeah, it's honestly mental how fragmented it is. Every council is its own little island. On the shutting-off worry: the data is statutorily public. Councils are legally required to publish it, and I'm respecting rate limits and not hammering anyone. So far no council has objected. Touch wood this remains the case. Tbh, I think the risk is more from the platform vendors than the councils themselves. It seems Idox etc have a commercial interest in this data being awkward to access.
Re:Scraping 241 UK council planning portals – 2.6M decisions... by nopurpose on Tuesday April 28, 2026 @04:30AM (#47931843)
There was a story how similar initiative for a courts decisions scraping was shut off.